Owner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir of Motherhood and Absence
July 2023 · Sold by Simon and Schuster
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1 review
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256
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About this eBook
Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily • Selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book of 2023
“This book…is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement.
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together.
Owner of a Lonely Heart is “a portrait of things left unsaid” (The New York Times), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an “unforgettable” (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.
“This book…is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement.
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together.
Owner of a Lonely Heart is “a portrait of things left unsaid” (The New York Times), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an “unforgettable” (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.
Ratings and reviews
1.0
1 review
Kristin Podgurski
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26 August 2023
Wish I could give this book away. Such a worshipper of victimology. Anti Asian crime is by far committed by non white and yet these are the only circumstances she brings up in her novel. Gratitude does not mean to grovel...it means to pay homage to those who provided and protected when you could not.
About the author
Beth Nguyen is the author of the recently published memoir Owner of a Lonely Heart, the memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, and two novels. Her work has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Essays. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Nonfiction in 2024 and teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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